Stressed Self to Best Self: The Science-Backed System for Sustainable Peak Performance

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Down To Business with Bobby Kerr on Newstalk, sponsored by Bank of Ireland.

Emmet Oliver (0:08)

Have you ever asked your employees, are they stressed? Do you care whether they're stressed? And if they are stressed, do you know the cause of it? And could it affect your bottom line? Well, my next guest thinks it can, and his book provides pathways to manage and hopefully eliminate some levels of stress. It's great to welcome my guest, Nick Propper, who's the co-author of Stressed Self, to Best Self, the science-backed system for sustainable peak performance. Nick, you're very welcome to the show.

Nick Propper (0:36)

Thank you, Emmet. It's a pleasure to be here.

Emmet Oliver (0:38)

Now, as I said in the intro, there's been a general awareness about stress for a long time. There's this idea that a happy workforce is a productive workforce. We generally all buy in and subscribe to that, but we don't really know the cost of stress. We know it's out there. We know it comes in waves. But is there any way to give us an idea of what is it that hits the bottom line?

Nick Propper (0:59)

Yeah, I think there are various metrics that most businesses will be measuring where the impact of, let's say, poorly managed or unmanaged stress will show up. So that could be retention, turnover issues. It could be recruitment challenges. Some businesses end up getting a reputation for being a hot house. That puts people off joining in the first place.

I think one of the most dangerous things is what I would call presenteeism. That one is hard to spot. So this is where you've got everyone in the right seat, you've got all the right capabilities, but somehow you're not quite operating at the level that the business requires. That's because if the critical mass of your people are buried under the stress load and therefore not quite performing at their peak, suddenly the business can't meet its objectives. It's pretty hard to pinpoint where that's showing up because everyone's there. It's just the majority of people are unable to perform at their best. And so there are definitely ways businesses can see this and measure it. I think the most important thing is for individuals to start recognizing their own stress warning signs and then to start recognizing it in the people that they work most closely with.

Emmet Oliver (2:15)

Now, when you started writing the book or sort of kicking the idea around, I presume there was a little bit of pushback, even in your own head, of voices in your head saying stress can be a good thing. It's just another word for an adrenaline, or some people might have argued it's just this body system reacting to the external conditions, and it's to be almost expected. Give me your pushback to those ideas, because presumably you have some level of pushback because the book kind of takes on these ideas head on.

Nick Propper (2:41)

Yeah, look, the key thing is we've got to stop demonizing stress. Actually, stress plays a critical role in allowing individuals and therefore businesses to meet very high levels of performance.

We don't want to try to eradicate stress and we're certainly not saying that the avoidance of stress is the answer. The issue is stress in the absence of any recovery that becomes very problematic. If you look at how people grow in all dimensions, physically, mentally, emotionally, we need two things. We need the discomfort, that's the stress part, that creates the opportunity for us to grow. But the actual growth in that dimension happens in the recovery phase. So physically, people get this. If you want to build a muscle, you lift weights. That's putting the muscle under stress. That creates the opportunity.

The physical body is smart. You can't keep lifting heavy weights all day, even if you wanted to. At some point, your arm is just going to force you to put the weights down. That starts the recovery process, and it's when you're fast asleep at night where there's four microfibers in the muscle, start to knit back together again. That's where the increased capacity in the muscle is delivered, that that's when the growth actually happens. Growth happens in the recovery phase, and the same is true mentally and emotionally. We need mental and emotional discomfort to get stronger in those dimensions. Turns out there's no shortage of that, but we have to have practices that allow us to recover in those dimensions if we're actually going to get hold of that growth and put it to use.

Emmet Oliver (4:21)

Now, you talk about a science-based system that you're looking at here, and you have talked to a lot of interesting people. The US military and intelligence services are among clients you've engaged with. So when we look at stress, there's different occupations, different age groups, different genders. So it's quite hard to sort of pull it all together.